BBC: “Publishers Try Skinnier Books to Save Money and Emissions”

From the BBC: 

A typical paperback book accounts for around 1kg of carbon dioxide, according to sustainability expert Mike Berners-Lee.

Perhaps that does not sound like much. But in the US alone, where 767 million paperback books were sold in 2023, this is equivalent to the electricity use of more than 150,000 homes for a year.

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The publisher HarperCollins has experimented with compact typefaces that require less ink and paper. This has resulted in savings of hundreds of millions of pages.

A leader in this field is Sustainable Typesetting, a project of the design and typesetting company 2K/DENMARK. One of the company’s focus areas is complex typesetting for long texts, including Bibles.

Andreas Stobberup, project lead at 2K/DENMARK, says that Sustainable Typesetting can achieve page count reductions of up to 50%, although he recommends less dramatic changes for novels.

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But other design features of large print books include more blocked letters and, if images are involved, more attention to the contrast between the foreground and the background.

“It’s a totally different typeface,” says Greg Stilson, head of global technology innovation for the American Printing House for the Blind.

Mr Stobberup concedes that incorporating such design in regular books “will not look as aesthetic”.

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